Primarily a collection of news links about all 10 Horizon League teams on a daily basis, culled from online newspapers, school athletic websites, the conference website, and school newspapers, plus some other content from time to time.

Monday, December 14, 2009

News On The Horizon 12/14/2009

#20 Butler 74, #15 Ohio State 66: Two very similar scores yet two very different games. If not for the Xavier-Cincinnati game this could have been the game of weekend. And no we are not just saying that because we were at this game too. The obvious buzz coming into this game was about the question as to how the Buckeyes would respond to Evan Turner’s absence. It should be clear now to everybody that they will miss him a lot. Gordon Hayward was huge for the Bulldogs with his 24 points and 8 rebounds as he is rapidly becoming the star for Butler as Matt Howard continues struggling to stay out of foul trouble. Howard is averaging an astonishing 4.1 fouls per game this year in 24.5 minutes per game. That’s more than 1 foul every 6 minutes. Even though Butler pulled this one out, Brad Stevens has to figure out a way to keep Howard in the game because Ohio State went on a huge run every time he was out of the game. Some of the Butler message boards have even suggested bringing Howard off the bench so the game is a bit more settled before he gets out there. I’m not sure that I would go that far, but Stevens needs to do something about Howard’s penchant for picking up careless fouls.